


no earthly treasure

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abduction, Community: bucketlist, F/M, Seduction, Stockholm Syndrome, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:10:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your world stretches from stem to stern of this ship, and he is lord of it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no earthly treasure

**Author's Note:**

> Anon asked for _AU: Instead of having Mindfang's new favorite slave assassinated, Dualscar steals her in a fit of jealousy and claims her for his own, or tries to._

You can feel hands on you, and you struggle toward wakefulness. Your head won't clear, but you think to yourself that you must not disappoint her. Your mistress has made that plain. You stir, trying to move.

"Hush, my bella dolorosa," someone whispers in your ear, cool breath ghosting against your skin. "Relax."

You take orders much better than you used to. You stop struggling. You drift.

* * *

The next time you wake, you're aware that you're floating. Movement still takes effort, but something in the back of your mind tells you this is wrong, so you try: you reach out, find the edge of a recuperacoon, pull yourself clumsily upward until you're half-clear of the slime. You have to stop there to wait for the dizziness to clear from your mind, and as soon as you can force yourself to keep moving you spill free of the recuperacoon entirely. Sopor glistens on your skin, cloying and thick; you try to wipe it from your limbs with your hands.

You've been stripped bare at some point since you first fell asleep. This isn't the first time. The Marquise likes to see you this way. But usually she wants to be there when you wake, and you're alone now.

The floor rolls under your feet in the familiar rocking cadence of the sea, and you can hear the creak of rigging above, but you don't recognize this cabin. Would your legs hold you, if you tried to get up to go investigate?

Before you can convince your body to make the attempt, a door opens behind you. You hear laughter, a low, masculine voice, and the confident stride of boots on the boards. "Sleeping beauty's already awwake, I see," your visitor says.

You let your head loll back against your shoulder, looking over at him: you recognize him first by the flamboyant captain's coat, and second by the shock of violet in his hair. "Sir," you say, your lips and tongue slow. Orphaner Dualscar is your mistress's kismesis, but her hatred for him is cordial in the strange way of highbloods, and she has insisted that you address him with respect. "Is my lady...?"

"Sshh," he says, coming over to stand before you. "Let's not speak a her right now."

Something is wrong here.

Orphaner Dualscar kneels on the floor in front of you and smiles, close-mouthed, without the threat of teeth. He cups your face in one jewelry-laden hand, wiping a smear of sopor slime from your cheek. "Howw about wwe clean you up an go havve breakfast?" he asks.

"Thank you," you say. Your voice comes out slurred, and you blush. You will shame the Marquise with your slovenliness. (You would shame yourself, if there were anything left of you, but since you lost Him and the survivors scattered there has been nothing else that could compare.)

"You're a gorgeous piece a wwork, you knoww that?" he says as he helps you up off the floor. "Nevver seen a landdwweller so pretty."

You think you want to argue; shouldn't he pay that compliment to the Marquise, his quadrantmate? But you don't trust your tongue, or the heaviness still lingering in your mind. You let him wipe you clean, then dress you in a delicate confection of silk and lace. The dress is unfamiliar, but it fits you perfectly.

* * *

He feeds you from his own hands when you can't shake the sopor slowness enough to take care of yourself. You apologize more than once, but he only gives you that gentle, no-threat smile and shakes his head. His eyes are rich as amethysts, and the jagged scars across his face are bright as coral. His fingers trace the line of your bottom lip as he feeds you.

"Why?" you try to ask at the end of the meal. Your tongue still feels heavy in your mouth. "Why would you be so kind to me?"

"Oh, swweetheart," he says, stroking your hair back from your face. "Isn't it obvvious?"

You try to think of the obvious answer. It escapes you. The room spins, and you swoon into his arms.

* * *

The pattern repeats. It isn't until the fourth time that you manage to claw your way back to lucidity enough to say, "You're keeping me drugged."

For a moment he pauses in the act of sponging sopor slime from your body. His hand fits into the curve of your waist, cool and strong. "It wwas the only wway to keep you safe," he says.

You shake your head, because that doesn't make sense. "Safe from what?"

Dualscar reaches up with his other hand and runs his fingers through your hair. "From yourself," he says. "Or I guess I could say, from wwhat she could make you do to yourself." He looks at you with such kind, sorrowful eyes. "I'vve seen it before, wwhen she gets tired a someone. Didn't wwanna see you wwasted like that."

Your bloodpusher is trying to beat more quickly, despite the sedation. "Seen what before?" you ask. "What does she do?"

He grimaces, as if it hurts him just to think of it. "Wwhen she runs out a patience wwith her toys, they off themselvves," he says.

"You think—she makes them," you say. There is a tiny crawling fear in the back of your mind, and you realize when you try to focus on it that it's the fear of betraying her, of believing him, and being discovered.

"I'vve seen howw she gets her fangs in people. I'vve seen howw you swwoon ovver her like you think you're her swweetheart instead a her slavve." You can barely look him in the eyes. "You tellin me that wwas all your idea?"

The world lurches around you in a way that you can't blame on either drugs or the ship. "I need some air," you say.

* * *

He allows you up on deck, but insists that he be allowed to come with you. He fears that he has triggered some implanted urge in your mind, and tells you he couldn't bear it if you were to throw yourself into the water. You agree to his terms. All you do anymore is agree to highbloods' terms.

When he brings you up on deck, he holds you, your hands behind your back, his hands curled around your wrists. His grip is strong enough that you don't think you could break it, but not so tight that you will bruise.

The water stretches away in front of you to the horizon, ink black, rippling with the light of the moons. The wind chills you through your thin dress. His body offers a suggestion of warmth, and you still feel dazed; you lean against him. You discover there is a part of you that wants to believe the Marquise's affections were genuine. There is also a part of you that wants to believe Dualscar's intentions are kind. But you are tired, not in your body but in your soul; you have little faith left to spare.

* * *

He drugs you less after you confront him about it, or perhaps you're simply becoming accustomed to the sopor slowness of your mind and limbs. He still feeds you choice bites from his fingers when you take meals together, and he still touches you often—always mindful of his claws and of his strength, as though you were something silken and delicate, something breakable. There is hunger in the way he watches you; now that you're somewhat more alert you can see it. But he bides his time, even though you are a slave and entirely at his mercy.

Eventually you ask him, "Why?"

Dualscar stops in the midst of stroking your hair. "That's a big one, lovvely," he says. "You got somethin specific in mind?"

There are too many ways you could mean it; you have to stop for a moment and try to untangle them in your own mind. "Why are you still taking care of me?" you settle on eventually.

He looks away from you, shrugging awkwardly; suddenly he looks young, unsure, and you don't know what to think of him. "Cause I wwant to," he says. "I ain't good at talkin about feelins."

You don't want to press the subject. If he doesn't declare his feelings for you, then you won't have to figure out how to respond to them. The idea of him having feelings for you—red feelings, clearly, or you would be already torn to ribbons—should be terrifying, perhaps even more so than Mindfang's. Orphaner Dualscar hates landdwellers without exception. To _be_ the exception would be—

He cups your face in his hand, stroking your cheek. "You're driftin awway, lovvely," he says.

"M-my apologies," you stammer. You're blushing; his thumb traces the line of your cheekbone, smooth and cool.

"Wwouldn't wwant to think you wwere bored a my company," he says, and for an instant a dangerous smirk almost surfaces on his calm face.

"Never," you say. It's the only right answer.

* * *

You lose track of how long it's been since he—since you woke on his ship. You see no other trolls anymore; if he meets up with underlings to resupply the ship, he does it when you are cocooned in sopor and insensible. Cooking and cleaning are tended to by drones. There is only Dualscar, you, and the endless black water of the sea. The more your faculties return to you, the more you crave his company, longing for the stimulation of his conversation, the vibrancy of his presence.

You learn that he plays the fiddle, not sedate aristocratic melodies but lively dockside tunes; his eyes sparkle as he plays, as he drinks in the sight of you delighting in the first music you've heard in perigees. You try your best not to be captivated by the dance of his fingers over the fiddle's slender neck. You fear that you are not doing so well as you might like in that.

You grow accustomed to the solid strength of his presence at your back and the faint roughness of the boards under your feet when you stand on deck. At first it's a small price to pay for the chance to breathe the fresh air and feel the breeze on your face. Later it becomes almost a comfort, being able to lean into him, being able to depend on him to be there. He points out constellations to you, one arm around your waist, the other hand tracing shapes in the sky. His voice is a rumble against your back, thrumming under your skin.

Your world stretches from stem to stern of this ship, and he is lord of it all.

* * *

The warm seasons bring storms. The first two you outrun the worst of, sailing hard through choppy seas until only the very edge of the storm brushes the ship. Those are terrifying enough. (He could dive, should the ship be sundered; he could swim the depths and flex his gills and breathe. You would be utterly lost.)

Then comes the storm that he cannot entirely escape, and the terrible helplessness you feel as you wait below decks, clinging to a bolted-down bunk, sick with the furious upheaval of the sea. You still want to live. After all the horrors you've seen, after the fraction of those horrors you've suffered, still the imminent threat of death wakes your instincts and makes you hold fast to the life that's left to you.

Dualscar is on deck, fighting the storm to keep his ship in one piece. You catch yourself wishing there were something you could do. You tell yourself it's only selfishness that makes you hope he'll be all right. You can't bring yourself to believe it.

It's nearly dawn when he comes stumbling down below decks. You hear him slump down and stifle a groan, and before you can second-guess yourself you rush out into the corridor after him. His clothes are soaked through, clinging to his skin—with rain, mostly, but one of his shirtsleeves is heavy with a spreading purple stain.

You help him to his quarters, help him remove the tattered ruins of his shirt. His skin is marked by sweeps upon sweeps of combat, even his gills jagged on one side from an old wound. He smiles wanly when he sees you looking. "Ain't as bad as it looks," he says hoarsely.

"Hush," you say, forgetting yourself. "Let me take care of you."

"Thought you'd nevver ask," he rasps, as his eyes close. Your ribs feel too tight for the ache behind them.

You clean the gash on his arm and bind it closed with strips torn from his ruined shirt. As you work, his breathing slips from exhaustion into the slower cadence of sleep. He trusts you enough to let his guard down that far. You stroke a lock of damp hair back from his forehead and wish you could quell this fierce, desperate tenderness, but it won't fade—even when you've helped him to his recuperacoon and retreated to your own, you can still feel it, sparked and smoldering warm in your core.

* * *

You sleep soundly in the rich sopor he provides for you, but you still wake unsettled. Is he well? You chide yourself for being foolish; he is a battle-hardened seagrift with centuries of experience surviving worse harm than this. Still you find yourself drawn to his door, like a flutterbug to an open flame. You stand at the door and listen, but there's no sound from inside. Your vascular pump falters. You are ridiculous.

You open the door and cross to the edge of his recuperacoon; he floats weightless and elegant in the slime, long-boned and rangy with muscle. His eyes flutter and open as you look in on him: gold and amethyst, like the jewels he wears. "Evvenin, beautiful," he says, his mouth crooking upwards in a rakish smile.

"I hope—you are recovering, my lord," you say.

His eyes widen slightly, and you realize this is the first time you have called him that; the first time you have acknowledged that the relationship between you is personal now, that you are _his_ and not simply treating him with the respect any troll of his station would command. His smile widens. "I think I'm on the mend," he says.

He rises, lifts himself free of his recuperacoon with a slow and powerful grace; you realize at the sight of his stark, arched hipbone that he must have finished undressing himself after you left in the morning. You avert your eyes as if there is _any_ possibility he might have modesty to preserve, and he laughs.

"Come help me wwith this," he says as he steps out onto the bare floor. There are tiny violet-tinged fins at his ankles. You dare not look up.

"It would be my honor," you murmur; that is the only correct response from a slave. He reminded you once that you were the Marquise's slave rather than her lover. You try to remind yourself now that he has caused a change in your ownership, nothing more.

He hands you a towel and you sink to your knees without further instruction, wiping away the traces of sopor that cling to his feet, his ankles, his calves. His left thigh is seamed with three parallel scars, thin purple lines left by the claws of something vicious. You wait: surely he will demand your mouth. You are on your knees before him. He knows how thoroughly you are his.

His thumb strokes a line from your ear to your jaw, where he has his most extravagant frills and you have but unbroken skin. He cups your jaw in long, cool fingers, tilting your head up. The sheath of his bulge is flushed dark and dilating, but not yet drawn back enough to expose him. "Come up here, lovvely," he tells you, and his fingertips beneath your chin guide you as you rise.

He meets your eyes steadily and you don't dare look away. Orphaner Dualscar, who is famed for his hatred of landdwellers, who could kill you as easily as he breathes, leans in slowly as if he doesn't dare startle you, as if he wants to be sure you assent. Despite everything you have been, despite everything you know he is, you move to meet him. His mouth meets yours; your eyes close; your lips part. You are drowning.

* * *

His passion has been held back for perigees; now the floodgates are open, and you are overwhelmed by it. He takes you there on the floor of his cabin. He takes you again in the ruins of your evening meal—holding you down, licking sweet cream from your skin. You learn the taste of sea salt that clings to his skin, and the darker, musky brine of his genetic material. He cannot bring himself to stop touching you. You are intoxicated with the sensation, with the closeness, with his _need_.

Your nights blur. You are woken often by his hands on you, by his murmured promises of how he will make you feel. For all that he is careful with your body, he is impatient, aggressive, with anything that keeps you apart—his claws rend your thin dresses to ribbons, and he is a presence constantly at your side. Your world shrinks still further, until you are marking time by his hands, his mouth, his bulge, by the vivid splash of his genetic material across your thighs.

He decks you in jewels, amethysts dripping from your throat and your wrists. He tells you how lovely you are as you shudder beneath him, as you are undone by his touch. In the quiet, late hours of the morning, when the sun traps you below decks and the need for sleep weighs down your limbs, he whispers praise and pleas in equal measure, _lovveliest girl I evver seen_ and _nevver leavve me, beautiful, say you'll nevver leavve_.

You cannot resist him.

* * *

When he brings the ship in to port a perigee later, you almost don't know what to do with yourself. The idea of going ashore, of seeing other trolls, is alien and almost distressing after so long in his orbit.

He seems perhaps to feel the same way; he docks the ship but then is in no hurry to leave, instead remaining in his cabin with you. He touches you, teases you, coaxes you to your knees for him. You lick and suckle at his bulge until he spills for you, and he tells you how beautiful you are, how much it delights him to see you bathed in his color.

When someone boards the ship, strident footsteps approaching the cabin, you tense in alarm but he remains entirely relaxed, entirely pleased. His hand at the back of your neck insists gently that you stay where you are.

"Orphaner Dualscar, you sickening coward," a voice calls from on deck. A woman's voice. The Marquise Mindfang's voice. "You kill her and then flee from me, and then dare to show yourself in less than a sweep's time?" She's coming closer. You feel yourself tensing, anticipating discovery, and still you cringe when she kicks open the door.

"I'vve killed a lot a you landdwwellers in my time," Dualscar says. He strokes your hair back from your face, drawing the Marquise's attention to you. "Remind me wwhich one you cared about?"

Her multipupiled eye seems to burn right through you; you have to look away. "What have you _done_ with her?" the Marquise demands, cold and furious; you can feel traces of her anger lapping at your mind. "She was _mine_."

Dualscar laughs. "Marquise, you're not the only one wwho can be convvincin," he says. His bulge has already retracted; his fingers dance, re-lacing his trousers. He picks up his sword. "Some a us can rely on natural charm instead a cheatin, evven." He sounds so triumphant. "Still bored wwith wwhat wwe got goin on?"

"I hope you've enjoyed playing this little game," the Marquise growls, and her voice still makes you tremble. "Stealing my planned quadrantmate because you wanted more attention, Orphaner? You have my attention now." The hair on the back of your neck prickles, as if you can feel an onrushing storm. "When I get done with you, you're going to beg me to let you die."

"Promises, promises," Dualscar says.

You feel yourself suddenly consumed with hatred, with a need to carve your name in his flesh and see him beg for mercy. You whimper, trying to fight the urge, sure that it isn't yours, trembling with the effort of keeping your claws from his skin. He looks down at you. The warmth in his eyes is gone as if it had never been; he looks at you now with nothing but contempt. He snarls a hand in your hair and tosses you aside with horrible ease, and you hit one of the ribs of the wall hard enough to bruise.

Whichever one of them wins this duel, you are lost.


End file.
